Entries from January 2018

The 2017-18 season has been an up-and-down ride for the Apalachee and Winder-Barrow wrestling teams to this point. Struggles to fill out all the weight classes and some defections on the rosters didn’t serve the Wildcats or Bulldoggs as well during duals tournaments. But both Apalachee coach Randy Hill and Winder-Barrow coach Matt Patton are ...
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Barrow County Emergency Services is advising citizens to stay home this morning and off the roadways.
According to a news release, numerous accidents have occurred and the roadways all have snow and ice on them.
“Roadways are quickly deteriorating not only in Barrow but around northeast Georgia,” said Capt. Scott Dakin in the release. “Crews are delayed getting to the accident scenes due to the road conditions. Highway 81 has numerous cars that have slid off the roadway. It is best to just stay off the roads.”
Barrow County schools, Bethlehem Christian Academy and Lanier Techincal College are closed today, and government offices are on a two-hour delayed opening.

Alonzo Benjamin “A.B.” Gaines, 77, died January 14, 2018. Mr. Gaines was born and raised in Winterville, Ga., and eventually moved to the Sandy Cross community just outside of Lexington, Ga. He was the son of the late E.S. and Margaret Holcomb Gaines. He was a veteran of the United States Army, where he served as a Medic in Germany during ...
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Matthew James Nagel took his life unexpectedly on January 13, 2018, at the age of 27. Matthew is survived by his parents, Phaedra and Wallace Spencer of Bethlehem, Georgia, and John and Michelle Nagel of Gillsville, Georgia; his siblings David Nagel, Daniel Nagel, Joshua Nagel, John Nagel Jr, Michael Zonko, Jeffrey Zonko, Julia Robertson, and ...
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AUBURN - Dorothy “Dot” Marr Barnette, 85, passed away on Sunday, January 14, 2018. She was preceded in death by her husband of 44 years, Henry Barnette; her parents, Rev. Walter and Ollie Marr; and brother, Billy Marr. Mrs. Barnette was born December 10, 1932, in Winder. She was a homemaker and a longtime member of Mt. Moriah Baptist Church ...
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John Robert Barnes, Jr., 70, died January 13, 2018. Mr. Barnes was the son of the late John Robert Barnes, Sr. and Edna Wills Barnes. Mr. Barnes was preceded in death by his daughter, Amy Barnes; brother, Jack Barnes; and sister, Dianne Church. He was owner and operator of Barnes Finance. Survivors include his wife, Rosa Pruett Barnes; ...
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AUBURN - Virgil Carroll Holman, 77, passed away on Saturday, January 13, 2018. A native of Hoschton, he was preceded in death by his parents, James Emory Holman and Mattie Murphy Holman. He retired as a forklift operator with Tyco Electronics. Survivors include his loving wife, Barbara J. Baker Holman; son, Randall “Randy” C. Holman; ...
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Most of you don’t know Paul Krugman. That may be a blessing.
Paul writes for the New York Times and his NYT column is picked up by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Mondays.
I only know him from his weekly whining. Talk about viewing life from the left? Paul’s got it down pat. That and a half-empty glass.
Reading his stuff, however, is a pleasure because it makes me feel pretty grounded.
I don’t believe he has had a good night’s sleep since Nov. 8, 2016. I suspect the Republican win, and especially Donald Trump’s triumph, has raised his blood pressure, churned his stomach and nearly pushed him over the edge.
Last Monday he wrote, “Many of us came into 2017 expecting the worse. And, in many ways, the worst is what we got.”
Krugman is one who would probably have tabled the Constitution and allowed Obama another term. He has spent the past year attacking the Republicans and Donald Trump. I’m not sure he was being honest in his thoughts when he said he had hope for 2018.
I really believe he was a disbeliever and never dreamed Trump would be our 45th president.
Anyway, last Monday Krugman’s rants said Trump was “…every bit as horrible as expected…continues to prove himself utterly unfit for office, morally and intellectually… and the Republican Party…if anything to be worse than one might have expected…(is) composed entirely of cynical apparatchiks, willing to sell out every principle and every shred of their own dignity…”
I was confused for a moment and reread those paragraphs because it pretty much sounded like the Democratic Party he was trashing. It was, however, a thrashing of the conservative movement. I think he must be confused.
By the way, apparatchik, according to Merriam-Webster, is defined as “A member of a Communist apparatus; a blindly devoted official, follower, a member of an organization (such as a corporation or political party).”
There you have it. The conservative movement in America is acting like communists. Those might not be fighting words in New York but I think that speech down here in the South would create a ruckus.
The poor guy just won’t give up. Week after week, he rants, slashes, condemns, polarizes and dumps (for a better word) on the conservative people in this country.
I just can’t recall a period when the vitriol and hatred for one party was so hostile and vituperate in nature. The new left has given new meaning to the words hate, decency, corrupt and cynical. Unfortunately, our American culture and politics are being stressed to the limits. The left says the conservatives in this country are at fault and are becoming less and less democratic. That is not, however, the handwriting on the wall.
Columnists like Krugman, E.J. Dionne, Jr. (Washington Post), and Leonard Pitts (Miami Herald) are screaming and typing as fast as they can week after week attacking the conservative movement and, especially, President Donald Trump.
The national news media continues to churn out minute after minute of anti- Trump and anti-conservative news and editorials. Simply reporting the news is no longer in fashion.
Joining their tirades are Democratic Party leaders Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, Keith Ellison, Elizabeth Warren and Tom Perez (Chairman of the Democratic National Committee). All have declared total war on the conservatives in the homeland and make no bones about it.
It’s interesting that they continue to attack the president who was elected by the conservatives.
As the Democratic Party continues to move further left, they seem to believe that if they can defeat Trump, they will control the America that went to the polls and elected the president.
They are so blinded by their hatred for the American way, they can’t even control themselves. When one reads their message and looks at their actions, including their attack last year on one of their own (Bernie Sanders) during the campaign you have to wonder what they are thinking.
The left doesn’t intend to wait until the next election but are hoping to impeach Trump in the coming year. It will be a tough fight because Trump has actually, like him or not, accomplished a number of positives in his presidency.
He allowed our generals to take the fight to ISIS, he drew a line in the sand with Syria and is sticking to it, and he has taken a tough stand with Russia, especially in the Ukraine conflict.
Trump has re-established a strong relationship with Israel, he has put the United Nations on notice, and he has appointed a conservative to the Supreme Court.
In December he was able to get historic tax reform through Congress that both Clark Howard and Wes Moss (both popular investment advisors) say will be a big improvement for the middle class. We also see our unemployment at the lowest point in years, a good indication of economic growth.
If Trump says he has a bigger red button on his desk than his North Korean counterpart has, then I believe our president and it doesn’t keep me awake at night.
Krugman said, “…The GOP seems irretrievably corrupt …America is in mortal danger…and never in the nation’s history have we been ruled by people less trustworthy.”
I’m not sure where the ole fellow has been for the past eight years but I’ve been sleeping pretty soundly since last November. I’m comfortable with the trustworthiness of the conservative movement.
Being called an “apparatchik” hasn’t kept me awake either.
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Jimmy Terrell is retired from a career in law enforcement in Barrow County and is a Winder city councilman. He can be reached at ejterrell65@gmail.com.

If you ask a state legislator, particularly one who’s been around for a few terms, what their priorities are for the upcoming session, they’ll solemnly say something along the lines of, “Pass a balanced state budget.”
That’s the same thing as saying that one of your priorities for the next day is to breathe oxygen or drink water — that pretty much is always going to occur, unless you happen to drop dead unexpectedly.
Legislators can always be counted on to pass a balanced budget. That’s one of the few things that does get done in a typical session. So, let’s move on to other topics.
The General Assembly session that convened this week could end up being dominated by personality conflicts between one chamber and the other, and even within one chamber, because of the people who are running for something else.
The state Senate is headed by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who is running for governor.
The upper chamber includes Sen. Michael Williams (R-Cumming), who is also running for governor, and Sen. Josh McKoon (R-Columbus), who is running for secretary of state.
There is also Senate Majority Leader Bill Cowsert (R-Athens), whose wife is the sister of Brian Kemp’s wife. Kemp, the current secretary of state, is yet another candidate for governor. This could create some tensions between Cowsert and Cagle.
Williams will no doubt spend much of the session taking verbal potshots at his Republican primary opponent, Cagle. Williams has already been doing this for months on social media, where he’s been denouncing Cagle as a “career politician” and the “swamp” that Donald Trump is trying to drain.
McKoon has been trying for years to get a “religious liberty” bill enacted into law. Cagle has already signed a pledge that he will sign such a bill if he’s elected governor.
On the other side of the rotunda, however, is House Speaker David Ralston. He doesn’t like the idea of spending time on the religious liberty issue, especially with the state trying to persuade Amazon to locate a corporate headquarters here.
“I haven’t signed any pledges,” Ralston said when asked about the issue by reporters. “I haven’t seen very much out of the experience of other states that have tackled this issue that makes me want to model us after places like North Carolina, Indiana, and others.”
Ralston, on the other hand, wants the Senate to pass a bill that the House of Representatives approved last year overhauling the state’s adoption laws.
That measure stalled out in the Senate when a few Republicans tried to amend it to allow private adoption agencies to refuse to deal with same-sex couples.
Both Ralston and Gov. Nathan Deal are urging the passage of a “clean” adoption bill that doesn’t get dragged down by religious liberty issues. Ralston has the advantage of being able to hold up House votes on any Senate bills until that adoption bill is approved.
“I think the bill’s ready to be passed and I would encourage them (the Senate leadership) to do that,” Ralston said with a smile. “I think it would set a good tone for the session if they can get that done quickly.”
If legislators are able to move past these personal squabbles, there are some issues where they might actually get something done.
One of them is the expansion of mass transit services, both in metro Atlanta and other locales around the state. For years, lawmakers from outside the metro area would sneer at MARTA and the idea of mass transit, but that attitude is changing dramatically.
“If you’re going to be competitive for economic development in the future, if you want Amazon or companies like Amazon, you have to have transit,” said Rep. Kevin Tanner (R-Dawsonville), chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
There is support among legislative leaders for finding a way to motivate companies to make internet broadband services more widely available in rural Georgia, where access is a vexing issue.
They don’t appear eager to commit any state funding toward this task, however, which could mean that it’s a problem that continues to be a problem.
There’s no question that legislators will pass a state budget this session. Whether they accomplish anything else is an open question.
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Tom Crawford is editor of The Georgia Report, an internet news service at gareport.com that reports on state government and politics. He can be reached at tcrawford@gareport.com.